Route To O-Season 2020: Day 14

Today’s leg in Route to O-Season is a special one: We go back all the way to WOC Long distance in Japan in 2005, and look at the longest leg in the men’s course. 

The leg is as usually first provided without routes – you may take a look at it and think about how you would attack this leg (if the image is too small, you may click on it to get it larger):

Location

You find other maps from the area in omaps.worldofo.com here. See also latest additions in 3DRerun from this area in order to learn more about this terrain type.

Webroute

Next you can draw your own route using the ‘Webroute’ below. Think through how you would attack this leg, and draw the route you would have made. Today I have no GPS-data and no analysis, unfortunately, so I challenge all of you to provide some extra thoughts/analysis behind your route in the comment when drawing your route. Some of you have even been there or read the analysis – those comments are even more valuable. I will update the article with some comments/analysis if you’ve got good comments. Thanks!

Update: In an e-mail from Rolf Breckle I got a tip that there was an analysis of this leg in the good old “Orienteering Today” magazine. Below is a summary of the routes. Fastest was Michele Tavernaro around to the right, but David Schneider was only a few seconds slower on the left variant.

I have just drawn two routes. As far as I recall, the red one was chosen by many runners (many even running together in quite big “trains”) and was probably the best route. For example, both Thierry Gueorgiou and Øystein Kvaal Østerbø took this route.

Density map

See below for a density map of some of the ones who have drawn their routes so far (available during the day when some readers have drawn their route).

Additional information

You find the complete map in omaps.worldofo.com at this location.

Route to O-Season 2020 series

Route Choice Challenges while waiting for the real action: With the upcoming orienteering season indefinitely on hold in large parts of the the world due to COVID-19, regular orienteering route choice challenges may be one way to make sure those orienteering skills don’t get completely rusty. I’ll try to keep these coming daily, but need help from all of you out there to keep them coming and to keep up a certain quality.

Tips on good route choice challenges – either from races/trainings (even cancelled ones) or theoretical ones with accompanying analysis – are very welcome (please e-mail to jan@kocbach.net).

Not all legs are taken for the interesting routechoice alternatives – some are also taken because the map is interesting – or because it is not straightforward to see what to do on a certain leg. Any comments are welcome – especially if you ran the event chosen for todays leg!